Blue Monsters of Night Terror (official Persona 3 Anthology)
Translated this for all the Strega fans out there! I mentioned this before, but Strega generally have a lot of chapters in P3 anthologies, and I plan on translating them in the future. So stay tuned! Hope you liked this chapter!
Also I noticed that the words on the Strecats box aren’t clear, but it says “Please do NOT form any emotional or worlrdly attachment to them”
Edit: Fixed some of the spelling mistakes
Source: Persona 3 Dengeki Comic Anthology
Chapter: 9
Artist: LEM Imono (忌野Lem)
(The anthology manga stuff are all officially published and licensed by Atlus, except the translation and editing here which is done by me.)
i think that people only hate ken because he's a child.
now, i don't exactly have an ear to the ground on discourse these days, but ten or so years ago, i remember a lot of people hating him because he's "whiny" or "immature" or, somehow, "he killed shinjiro."
for the first two, it seems pretty clear to me that people who hold that opinion just hate ken because he's a kid. if they actually interacted with the story, they would see that after october 4th, ken is none of these things. he's barely even them before october 4th. i don't know about you, but if my mom died and no one believed me when i said i saw who did it and the only thing keeping me going was the knowledge that i was going to kill the man who took her from me one day, then i would probably act just like ken. why are people expecting maturity from a ten-year-old anyway? it's in the name. "this ten-year-old character is so immature." okay. fork found in kitchen.
and i think that these people completely ignore how different ken acts after october 4th. how he's the second member of SEES to have a persona evolution. he's the second member of SEES to decide to face forward and stop letting his past regrets dictate his life. to decide to fight in order to live, not just to seek revenge. the second. how does that not demonstrate incredible strength and maturity, much less from, as these people are so eager to point out, a child?
also, could you have marched towards almost certain death and fought against a primordial being for the slimmest promise of a future when you were ten? i couldn't have, and i was frequently called "mature" by adults at that age. people who play the game after october 4th and still refuse to see ken's HUGE growth is insane. his change is arguably one of the biggest. and he goes through it all as a child.
you even allow your hatred of ken to blind your understanding of characters like shinjiro and even akihiko. have these people ever stopped to consider why shinjiro's last request to akihiko was, "take care of him" ?? how can people not see the parallels? the biggest, most obvious one is that they're all orphans, and i'm not going to just gloss over that. the life of an orphan is extremely lonely. this is implied by ken, akihiko, shinjiro, and even the protagonist. shinjiro wants akihiko to be there for ken, because no one was ever there for them. give to him what no one ever thought to give to us. make sure his life isn't like ours. take care of him.
and the parallels between shinjiro and ken specifically are even more prevalent. have any of these people ever stopped to think about why shinjiro was warning ken on october 4th? warning ken not to turn out like him?
admittedly, in the game, i don't think this was localized as well as it could have been. what he said in japanese is more like, "if you kill me, then you'll suffer the same pain as me."
(source, but this is my own translation so take it with a gain of salt)
if you commit a murder, you'll know my pain. i don't want you doing this unless you know the consequences. i need you to be certain. i want you to kill me, but i can't let you until you know what you're getting into.
but we can analyze the localized version of it too, "if you take my life, then you're gonna end up just like me."
(source)
shinjiro already knows that ken is going down a similar path as him (self-destructive, suicidal), and shinjiro knows that it's all his fault. he has to at least try to set him down a better path. that's why he warns ken. "don't turn out like me. you don't want this pain. please kill me. i can't bear this pain either."
this brings us to the argument that "ken killed shinjiro," which can be pretty easily disproven. no, he didn't, that was takaya. plenty of video evidence out there. i personally translated 2 stage plays wherein takaya very clearly shoots shinjiro. but let's dig deeper than that, shall we?
"ken is the only reason shinjiro was there that night." that's true. but ken couldn't have known takaya would show up. the only reason takaya tried to kill ken was revenge for SEES kidnapping chidori. and SEES kidnapped chidori after she took junpei hostage during the september full moon operation. and chidori only knew about the full moon operations at all because junpei told her, because he was trying to impress her. does this make shinjiro's death junpei's fault?
nope! i actually think that shinjiro's death is his own fault. he forced his persona awakening, he killed ken's mom, and he made the choice to take the persona suppressors knowing full well that there were deadly side effects. he agreed to meet with ken on that day, at that place, during that time, knowing damn well he might not survive the night. likely even hoping for that very outcome.
shinjiro has been trying to kill himself since that fateful night two years ago. letting ken kill him, or, better yet, taking a bullet for him, gives his life more meaning. makes up for his mistakes. shinjiro dies happy. he is the only one happy about his death.
he asks ken, "isn't this what you wanted?" but it's actually what shinjiro wanted. it's what he's wanted all along.
would you truly let your hatred for ken just because he's a child rob you of your understanding of shinjiro's story? his character? his motivations?
what a truly boring way to experience this story. shinjiro sees the similarities between himself and ken. so why can't you?
hi everyone!! sorry for the delay. i'm still here, a episodic 24 page comic serious focused on the members of Strega from Persona 3 is finally online! :) you can download on a pay-what-you-want basis from itch.io here.
mostly silly but occasionally sad, no particular content warnings beyond what is present in the source material (mostly blood and swearing in this case).
I had loads of fun making this, thanks so much for enabling my bs and thank you for reading ❤️💚💛
strega fans! ever wanted to see jin actually use his programming skills? ever wondered how they all escaped from the kirijo group? ever wondered how takaya "saved" jin?
then by god is this play for you! p3wm act 4 the indigo pledge, out now on youtube. enjoy!
HUGEEEEE win for the strega fanbase this week !!!! thanks to a discord user in a strega discord [ @meeper511 on tumblr ] , we have scans of the shadow cry manga !!! there are no translations so your best bet is to use image translation , either way , HUGE WIN !!!!
Got the platinum earlier tonight! I have positive thoughts about the remake overall, but definitely some mixed feelings here and there. Hard to get into without spoilers, of course. Especially some of the Strega stuff. Maybe I'll elaborate in a few months? I've taken video and a lot of screenshots of most of the Strega content, too.
Randomly looked at my activity for the first time in ages today since Reload brought me back to checking tags and stuff and yeah... my old P3P FeMC liveblog was way back in 2015??? (Got a lot of new likes on that stuff recently). I just... can't even. How was that almost a decade ago??? I still remember doing it like yesterday.
Anyway, loving Reload. So far the Strega scenes I've gotten to have been the same in terms of dialogue but I'm not quite vibing with the new voices. Still recording them, though. I may post screenshots and vids later if anyone wants them.
